Tag Archives: Fred Hechinger

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Boys of Summer

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Hell of a Summer

by Hope Madden

Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk are not the first to send up the summer camp slasher. They may not even be the first this year. But that fact doesn’t make Hell of a Summer any less delightful.

The co-directors and co-writers are also co-stars, playing two best friends returning to their beloved Camp Pinewood for the first time as counselors rather than campers. Bryk’s Bobby is a wannabe Romeo hoping to score. Wolfhard’s Chris is a little more enlightened.

“Single use plastics are the real killer.”

Among the charms the writers bring to the film is the ironically unironic Gen Z humor, which can’t help but set the film apart from similarly themed comedies. The pair also invest in character. Yes, the circle of counselors looks like every other set of doomed slasher victims: horny teens making bad decisions. And while no actor is asked to shade in a lot of various grays, each character has enough screen time that their jokes feel character driven and earned.

Abby Quinn shines as the grungier kid in the bunch, but it’s Fred Hechinger—who had one hell of a 2024, with roles in Thelma, The Nickel Boys, and Gladiator II—who steals this movie. The same sweet natured haplessness that fueled his turn as devoted grandson in Thelma lends power to the trope-skewering at the center of this film.

Hell of a Summer’s subversions are never heavy handed. They’re almost delicate, with quietly observed authenticity that echoes the film’s—and generation’s—underlying, if often comedic, empathy.

The plot itself could have used a few more solid surprises. Hell of a Summer does not set out to reinvent the wheel, and even commits to one of the genre’s most tiresome new stereotypes. (The social media influencer has replaced the rich, popular blonde as horror’s shorthand for victim most deserving a comeuppance.)

Still, it’s fun while it lasts. And Fred Hechinger is a treasure.

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Hunt for Green December

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Kraven the Hunter

by Hope Madden

I keep waiting for Aaron Taylor-Johnson to become a giant household-name superstar. He’s a good-looking kid, always turns in solid work, makes interesting career choices. I’ve been a fan since 2010’s Kick-Ass, but it doesn’t seem to me that he’s really hit.

Maybe now’s his time. He does a solid job in a supporting turn in Nosferatu, hitting screens this Christmas. And based on the trailer, he seems to be leading the most anticipated horror sequel in decades, next summer’s 28 Years Later. Plus, he’s finally starring in his own franchise comic book superhero movie, J.C. Chandor’s Kraven the Hunter.

And holy shit, J.C. Chandor! Do you know how good a director he is?! Margin Call, All Is Lost, A Most Violent Year—these are brilliant films. Brilliant! And you know what happens with genius indie directors pair up with Marvel. Just look how well that went for Oscar winner Chloé Zhao and her endlessly maligned Eternals.

What to know going in? It’s rated R. Hmmm, provocative. Oscar winners Ariana DeBose and Russell Crow join Taylor-Johnson, along with beloved indie actors Christopher Abbott and Alessandro Nivola, plus Fred Hechinger, who is killing it in 2024 (Thelma, Gladiator II, Nickel Boys).

The result: After a fun, bloody prologue, Act 1 plods along with scene after scene of exposition. In Act 2, we get to see a lot more exposition, a bit more action, but at least the seriously fine ensemble is able to carve out some weird, fun characters.

Hechinger comes off best as the sweet-natured younger brother Dmitri to Kraven (Taylor-Johnson). Both sons of criminal kingpin Nikolai Kravinoff (Crowe), Dmitri craves his father’s respect while Kraven spurns all his dad stands for and hunts down baddies like him all over the world.

Crowe, brandishing a ludicrous Russian accent, is fun in that saucy Russell Crowe way. Likewise, Nivola and Abbott are delightfully, drolly evil and seem to be having an excellent time.

DeBose is wasted in a badly written role. Her scenes are almost exclusively with Taylor-Johnson, who’s asked to look good shirtless, move about well, and talk more than the character should just to make sure audiences don’t get lost.

The biggest problem are the CGI animals. Yikes. (It makes one worry for the brilliant indie director Barry Jenkins and his leap to CGI animals/giant studios with next week’s Mufasa: The Lion King.) How can they all look this bad?

But, Act 3 delivers so much blood! I’d almost forgotten about that R rating until Kraven snaps shut those bear traps on that bad guy’s head!

It’s not a great movie. I doubt it’s really franchise material, which is almost too bad because I’d love to see Hechinger again. It’s not really worth waiting for the Act 3 payoff, unless you just really like bloodspatter and viscera in your superhero movies.

Maybe 28 Years Later will be better.

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Return of the King

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Gladiator II

by Hope Madden

Ridley Scott knows how to stage an epic. At 87, he’s lost none of his flair with massive battles on land or sea, nor with the brutal intimacy of hand-to-hand combat. And he still knows how to cast a movie.

His narrative skills have taken a step back, but his eye has rarely been sharper.

It’s been 24 years since Scott’s Oscar-bedecked Gladiator cemented its position as the best sword-and-sandal film, but in the age of Caesars, only 14 years have passed. Scott opens Gladiator II with a lovely animated sequence honoring the fallen Maximus, as well as many of the filmmaker’s most iconic images.

And then we land on the film’s present-day African coast, a battle with a Roman navy led by Acacius (Pedro Pascal), a nation subdued, and a grieving widower (Paul Mescal) claimed as prisoner of war.

But we know he’s no ordinary prisoner.

For the next 2+ hours, Scott toys with “echoes through eternity” as he undermines much of the rebellious political nature of his original in favor of a returning king parable. That, a few wobbly accents, a couple of narrative dead spots, and a really poor decision involving sharks weaken the sequel.

But a good gladiator can’t be stopped, and Mescal is a really good gladiator. Russell Crow layered righteous rage with tenderness. Mescal replaces that tenderness with a vulnerability that only makes the rage more unruly. A touch of mischievous good humor humanizes the character and compels attention.

As does Denzel Washington. I dare you to take your eyes off him. Vain but wise, calculating and saucy, Washington’s Macrinus proves a much more complicated foe than the original’s wholly dishonorable, incestuous crybaby Commodus. But the simplicity of good v evil clarified Gladiator’s appeal. Macrinus is harder to hate.

Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger supply the syphilitic excess this go-round as twin Emperors Geta and Caracalla. Connie Nielsen returns, regal as ever, though no more skilled at staging coups. The balance of the cast is uniformly solid if not entirely memorable.

Gladiator II delivers an often exhilarating, mainly gorgeous spectacle populated by enigmatic characters performed admirably. It does not live up to Gladiator. But what could?

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Stop or My Grandma Will Shoot

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Thelma

by George Wolf

Within the first few minutes of Thelma, writer/director Josh Margolin establishes two important things: 1) 90+ year-old Thelma (June Squibb) and her twenty-something grandson Danny (Fred Hechinger) share a sweetly authentic relationship, and 2) we’re not here to simply laugh at old people eating hot wings or talking dirty.

The laughs are here, but they are lightly organic and relatable across generational divides, consistently peppered around a kinda sorta heist caper and the search for a getaway scooter.

After getting computer lessons from her helpful and patience grandson, Thelma receives a convincingly scary phone call. The boy on the line sure sounds like Danny, and he says he’s been arrested. Then an authoritative voice (Malcolm McDowell) takes over, telling Thelma to cough up $10,000 for her grandson’s quick release.

Danny, and his parents (Parker Posey and Clark Gregg) eventually sort out the scam, but not before Thelma has dropped the cash in a mailbox. The police don’t offer much help, so Thelma sets out to “borrow” her friend Mona’s (Bunny Levine’s) gun and her other friend Ben’s (the late Richard Roundtree) tricked out scoot, and go get her 10k back.

Yes, Ben worries that they’re “old, diminished,” and Thelma laments that most or her friends are “dead, got sepsis or moved to Cleveland.” But they’re not the only ones struggling with their current phase of life. Danny is full of anxiety about his move into adulthood, his parents can’t seem to let go, and Margolin makes sure the message here is that we all have our good and bad days.

“And what’s today?” Ben wonders.

“We’ll find out!” Thelma is quick to reply.

Squibb is an absolute delight (shocker!), and her pairing with the distinguished Roundtree makes for an irresistible duo of vigilantes. Posey and Gregg supply some effective slapstick, and Hechinger (so good in News of the World) impresses again as a young man who worries that caring for his grandma may be the only thing he’s really good at.

Thelma is Margolin’s feature debut, and it displays a fine flair for madcap comedy that comes with a crowd-pleasing, easily digestible message. You’ll be laughing with Thelma, not at her, and that’s an important difference that Squibb rides all the way to the ATM.

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Buffalo Stance

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Butcher’s Crossing

by Hope Madden

Nicolas Cage has done the wild West before. Of course, with 116 acting credits, he’s done most everything before. But he’s done this recently ­– earlier this year in The Old Way, and a couple of years back in Prisoners of the Ghostland. What’s new with Butcher’s Crossing?

Cage plays Miller, a buffalo hunter. He works for himself. And he knows the stragglers with their paper thin hides around these parts ain’t nothing compared to the majestic creatures he’s seen in the thousands over in Colorado territory. If only somebody’d pony up the dough, he could put together a hunting party and bring in the biggest haul this town’s ever seen.

Well, sir, that’s just what young Will Andrews (Fred Hechinger) wants to hear. He dropped out of Harvard in search of adventure, and this looks to be that.

Co-writer/director Gabe Polsky adapts John Williams’s gorgeous 1960 novel of bitter truth and American mythology. Visually striking, the film’s untamed beauty belies its meager budget. Creating an atmosphere with limited means is an instinct Polsky has shown since his impressive feature debut, Motel Life.

Miller, Will, the hyper-religious Charlie (Xander Berkeley) and the scoundrel Fred (Jeremy Bobb) head into the Rockies in search of buffalo. What they find, along with the beasts, is themselves, and that is not pretty.

Butcher’s Crossing becomes a descent into madness film. This should be where Cage excels. Madness is essentially his brand. The character isn’t written well enough to leave an impression and Polsky’s storytelling is too tight to let the veteran madman open up. Lunacy never materializes.

Hechinger, memorably naïve in News of the World, delivers well enough as innocence turned sour. Both Bobb and Paul Raci, as the bitter entrepreneur who warned the men against the hunt, add a bit of color to the story.

Butcher’s Crossing is an ugly story of greed. It’s an ugly story of America. The shots of bison carcasses make an impression – the photography throughout is impressive, but this sickening image is particularly something. Unfortunately, Polsky’s script and cast can’t quite match the visual clarity he gives the tale.

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Mighty Neighborly

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The Woman in the Window

by George Wolf

The Woman in the Window is a testament to the power of “all in.”

Like if you’re spying on your neighbors, get a zoom lens, take pictures! And if you’re modernizing Hitchcock, embrace that shit from the opening minutes and don’t f-ing look back.

For director Joe Wright and screenwriter Tracy Letts, that’s the play as they adapt A.J. Finn’s bestselling novel. And it’s a smart one.

Psychologist Anna Fox (Amy Adams, fantastic) has a shrink of her own these days (Letts), and plenty of prescriptions. Suffering from crippling agoraphobia, Anna will not leave her spacious Manhattan townhouse. She’s got her cat Punch and her downstairs tenant David (Wyatt Russell), but outside of occasional conversations with her ex-husband (Anthony Mackie), Anna spends most of her time watching her neighbors and old movies.

Then the Russells move in across the street.

Jane (Julianne Moore) comes over for an enjoyable visit, has some wine and admits that Alistair (Gary Oldman) can be angry and controlling. A later conversation with the teenaged Ethan Russell (Fred Hechinger) seconds that.

So when Anna sees Jane stabbed in her apartment, she’s sure Alistair is to blame. But with detectives (Brian Tyree Henry, Jeanine Serralles) looking on, a different Jane Russell (Jennifer Jason Leigh) appears, swearing that she’s never even met Anna before tonight.

For the entire first hour, Wright (Atonement, Darkest Hour, Hanna), Letts (Pulitzer winner for writing August: Osage County) and this splendid ensemble put the hammer down on a delicious mystery ride. Putting stairwells, doors, railings and more in forced perspective, Wright intensifies our relation to Ann’s small world while Letts’s crackling script draws us into the mystery and Danny Elfman’s staccato score hammers it home.

Is any of Anna’s story even real, or is it her meds and fragile psyche talking? This question allows the direct homages to classics like Rear Window and Vertigo to be filtered through a movie-loving unreliable narrator, becoming a wonderfully organic device that feeds this intoxicating noir pot-boiler.

As events escalate and Anna’s plight becomes more overtly terrifying, the novel’s pulpy seams begin to show, and the film stumbles a bit in transition. But Adams is strong enough to keep us rooted firmly in Anna’s camp, long enough for the darker side of Hitchcock to wrestle control.

Taking a story like this from page to screen successfully requires a strong, confident vision and a committed, talented cast. The Woman in the Window is overflowing with riches on both counts, landing as immensely satisfying fun.